1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to wireless communication systems. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to a method and apparatus for multicarrier control in a wireless communication system.
2. Introduction
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various communication services such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, etc. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., bandwidth and transmit power). Examples of such multiple-access systems include Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) systems, Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) systems, Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) systems, 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems, orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) systems, and Single-Carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) systems.
In communication systems where multiple uplink and downlink carriers are present, certain rules should be defined specifying feedback regarding acknowledgement of received data. While in LTE Release 8 there may be only one uplink paired with one downlink, and the feedback of the uplink transmission is sent on the corresponding downlink carrier on a physical feedback channel, such a solution is inapplicable to multicarrier systems (e.g., LTE-Advanced) having asymmetric uplink and downlink configurations.
Accordingly, there exists a need in the art for a method and apparatus that control multicarrier HARQ feedback in asymmetric multicarrier systems.